I was listening to a music podcast yesterday and amongst many other annoying traits, the hosts kept throwing around the accusation of ‘cultural appropriation’ seemingly at random. Many times they would trip over themselves as they tried to explain exactly how each instance was cultural appropriation, usually ending up at some variation of ‘I’m not sure but I know it when I see it’. It seems to be another term which has been homoeopathically diluted to the point of uselessness.
It got me wondering exactly what the term means. These hosts were applying it to mean literally any aspect of non-white music (whatever that means) being borrowed by white artists, so covering an old R&B song (in this case, Harlem Shuffle by the Stones) or incorporating aspects of reggae in a rock song (although they were quick to exclude The Clash, but couldn’t explain why they got a pass).
Does it work in the other direction? Was JayZ culturally appropriating in Hard Knock Life? What about J-Pop or K-Pop, where they are wholesale stealing 80s boy/girl band tropes from Western music. Or think of early jazz, which was a fusion of European harmonic theory and aspects of African music. All western music since the Gregorian chant is cultural appropriation of some sort, by this definition.
Were the Black and White Minstrels cultural appropriation? I would say that was more straight up racism, as I doubt there is any recognisable element of black culture being appropriated. Buffy St Marie? Yes, seems pretty clear to me, as she falsely claimed a heritage and rode it to commercial success. Judge Dread also wholesale lifted an entire persona, but never claimed to be something he wasn’t. What about Ian Astbury dressing up like a Native American? Was anyone genuinely confused about it being schtick?
I think the best thing is to ignore these berks using right-on rhetoric to point-score how hip they are. Cultures exchange and share what is good, so things go back and forth. Is King Sunny Ade culturally appropriating guitar music? Do non-white bands need to stop wearing trousers and return to grass skirts and penis gourds ? (Now I think of it, the latter has surely been adopted by some western bands.). Christopher Columbus allegedly brought chillies back from South America. They enhanced global cuisine, and become a universal. “Stay in your lane” is as ignorant an idea as seeing education as privilege, or that it is “white” to read to your children. What do these folk think a griot was?
I DISKARD THEM.
Should we boycott the Afro-Cuban All Stars (and The Buena Vista Social Club). The clue’s in the name, hiding in plain sight.
Complicated, innit?
Brian Jones was the master of cultural appropriation (‘Little Red Rooster’, ‘Under My Thumb’, ‘Paint It, Black’)… it’s what made the Stones great. Pity there’s not more of it!
“He took to the sitar like a native”, as Frank Zappa observed.
Brian Jones took so many drugs he could tolerate a whole 45 minutes of pipers.
Cultural appropriation v cross-fertilisation: is there a difference?
If the cultural origin is dismissed as unimportant or actually denied then we have appropriation.
Otherwise it’s palate enrichment and not a bad thing.
The Rolling Stones always credited sources when they recorded covers. Many other acts did not. But plenty of non-white artists appropriated songs without crediting their sources too.
Was going to say this, follow The Stones not Led Zeppelin
HOUSE!!
?
Have you never played bingo dai?
When a woman appropriates male gametes into her body, for the purposes of procreation, she adds that gene pool to hers. This can include, amongst other traits, the culture of the ethnicity involved. It would be difficult not to find, by now, a little bit of everything in everyone, however small.
Just checked. Mine has been updated, English, Welsh, Scottish, French, Norwegian….
I’m very fond of the genes I’ve inherited from sponges.
“Brian Jones took to the sitar like a native”, as Frank Zappa observed.
Ooh, Brian Kennedy’s in da house!
I’m on episode 20 of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs and would recommend Andrew Hickey’s very nuanced and thoughtful approach to this issue. One of his key ideas is the difference between adding something new, by mixing up one style of music with another, such as jump music with western swing, and just copying.
His episode on Sh-Boom (ep. 18), the original being by one-hit wonders The Chords (black musicians) and the identical version that has come to be the one remembered and anthologised, (white musicians) The Crew Cuts, is excellent on all this, including the copyrighting or not that applies to arrangements and the Robin Thicke Blurred Lines vs Marvin Gaye case.
It’s something else for people with too much time on their hands to get indignant about.
This. ⬆️
The concept of ‘Cultural Appropriation’ strikes me as being essentially racist, in that it depends on a belief that each race or culture is homogenous and has clear boundaries. Any moderately intelligent person knows this nonsense.
As a dyed-in-the-Aran-sweater folkie, I look at my own genre and just see so much enrichment through collaboration, and everyone loves it. I can’t imagine a situation where anyone would dismiss any of it as cultural appropriation.
As the OP said, most of the crimes described as cultural appreciation can much more easily be described in other terms. Belittling a culture is always crap.
Wasn’t Euan MacColl hard core about folk songs to the point where people “should” only sing songs which came from their area. To the point where he refused any royalties for “The first time ever I saw her face”?
(I invented the last bit).
Oh yes – either their area or occupation. I will sometimes introduce a song as ‘passing the Ewan MacColl test’. I mean, honestly, that would mean that all those brilliant miner’s songs would have to be made redundant, as no-one can sing them legitimately any more. Complete nonsense. *mutters into non-existent beard*
Agreed!
Cultural appropriation and cultural exchange are different things. The latter involves some respect. The former, donning blackface or dreadlocks, calling sports team “Redskins” and pretending to have tomahawks strikes me as appropriation. I think Mark Ellen told a story about some white music journo who would tell people “I and I is going to lunch”. That’s appropriation.
I think Mark Ellen told a story about some white music journo who would tell people “I and I is going to lunch”. That’s appropriation.
Perhaps – or, to quote Vincent from above, perhaps it’s “berks using right-on rhetoric to point-score how hip they are”…
That was NIck Logan I believe, the then editor of the NME, who was heavily into reggae at the time and promoted the music as much as he could. So it came from a good place. Smoking a bit of herb no doubt played it’s part. He later edited The Face, which featured much multi -culturalism and numerous black acts.
If that’s who it was – and he was the editor of the NME at the time – then Vincent was probably correct! 🙂
The funny thing was Bob Marley didn’t talk like that either, he just adopted this patois to annoy white journalists who were trying to interview him.
Which just goes to show, those driven by an ideological fixation overlook all the nuance and complexity to hammer the point home. The truth is richer and more interesting.
…and funnier, in this case…
There’s probably an interesting thread on musicians using different characters/personas in different contexts. Keith Richards can apparently turn the Keef persona on and off depending on whether or not there’s a camera on him.
It wasn’t Nick Logan, but his successor Neil Spencer, who is alleged to have uttered that nonsense.
Sounds equally capable of interpretation as lightly humourous and self-deprecatingly ironic. Without any knowledge of the tone and body language that accompanied its utterance, it’s impossible to say. If the bloke was a crass idiot in other ways, the accusation would certainly stick, but if you think his enthusiasm for the genre was heartfelt and genuine, then you might cut some slack.
It was “I and I step forward fi sandwich”, ackshully
Good grief!
Perchance the utterance was made in 1976, shortly after the release of the celebrated LP from the recently deceased Mr Romeo?
Anyone use iced ink? Just post iced ink, under your name.
Are you on the intended thread, Retro old chap?
You don’t catch me that easily, Bart.
I think I’ve been scummed again…
It is all bollocks like most social media and I ignore it all.
I get my news from the BBC and The Guardian and GB news for some fun!
I talk with my students in Japan about this topic. We discuss the “kimono scandal” at Boston Museum of Fine Arts, when some activists complained that visitors trying on kimonos for fun at an exhibition was racist, but they have never seen a problem with this (every tourist office in Japan has a kimono rental scheme!). So I do find many claims of appropriation (often from the US) rather pious and unfeasible. Nevertheless, I still consider white frat boys wearing Native American headdress, or that wanky artist who used real photos of Khmer Rouge victims for a laugh, as crass and inappropriate.
I think Asians look at this in a different way. I live in multicultural Singapore, where, for example, it is perfectly fine for a non-Chinese person to wear traditional Chinese dress to a Chinese New Year dinner. The schools will encourage kids to dress up when public holidays are coming around and my son has outfits for Chinese New Year, Eid and Deepavali. He wore a kilt to last year’s Racial Harmony day.
Yes, I agree. Without wanting to become pretentious, Japanese modernity was always syncretic and dependent on new forms to adapt, even if the population was relatively homogeneous (although this is an historical hot topic because of the imperialist period) so there is less defensiveness around “appropriation.” The school days sound fun!
I live in Alice Springs, and work for an Aboriginal business.
There are some things that whitefellas do that might be considered appropriation. Living on a community doesn’t give you the right, for example, to try to adopt a skin name.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-12/arrernte-singer-questions-skin-names-for-non-indigenous-people/8172482
As with many of these complexities around race and culture, power imbalance is the point of contention. Has the complexity and dignity of the source culture been cheapened or lessened by the association? Does the ‘borrowing’ culture ‘gain’ more (wealth, status, attention) through their position of privileged cultural capital?
Often it’s an unexamined level of relative privilege that is exposed when cultural appropriation takes place. It just feels kinda ‘off’.
Nothing complex going on in the “Nick Logan’s reggae sandwich” story –
just an “NME berk using right-on rhetoric to point-score how hip they are” kinda issue…
Sometimes we forget what we’ve borrowed. I don’t recall the phrase “to chill” or “chill out” being used much in the UK before the mid 80s, when Hip Hop broke through. I used to find it clunky when it first became popular and would be used by Curly Watts or Grant Mitchell rather than LL Cool J. Nowadays they probably use it in the House of Lords.
(I should make it clear that this comment in no way is intended to suggest that the NME berk was ahead of his time.)